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Manya Auster Feldman - August 11, 1998

So what was it like in the D.P. camp?

Uh, well, we had—we were provided with food and some clothingthat they got from probably, probably uh, warehouses where they stored theJewish clothing that—it's—you know, I'll never forget the coat thatI got. I, I, I, I was desperate. I needed a coat. And I got in—that wasin Pinsk. I got into a warehouse and I saw all these clothes are laying witha yellow uh, Star of David, all the clothes from the Jews. I got a coat andI walked away. It, it was a terribly eerie feeling. Who knows whose coat I'mwearing. But in Berlin, they fed us. They organized schools. It was a very,very good organization. The children—there were—uh, a lot of peoplestarted getting married. That's when I got married. You know, we were allyoung people.

How did you meet your husband?

I met my husband in that small uh,he came to, to meet somebodyfrom Poland. That was the first stop when a truck came in, that was the firststop in that camp, when they brought in the people.

In Ebensee?

No, no. In, in, in Berlin, in the, the French sector. There werea German sector—I mean, a Russian sector, a French sector, a, a Britishsector and an American sector. And we were in the French sector. That's whereI met him. And we got married in uh, in 1948. My son was born in 1949. Butin '48, they already dispersed the DP camps. They, they, they uh, transportedall of them into West Germany. And from there they looked for a means of howto get them out, either to Palestine or America. They started—you know,they—we started uh, uh, uh, getting contact with relatives and tryingto get visas of how to get in. That was in 1948. But in um, in '49—theend of '49—no, no, in '48, they dispersed the camp. '49 and '50, we livedin Berlin. My husband did some business and they were a group, a group ofJewish people that remained, that remained from the camps. And um, uh —

Was it the Joint Distribution Committee that helped?

The Joint Distribution Committee that helped and the UNRAA helped.And uh, we did—but we started doing some business. And uh, uh, we didnot—we, we made it a point not to associate with the German people, notat all. We, we're already had our education in the, in the camps they hadschools. And uh, um, yeah by—oh, I started saying that we, we startedasking for visas. But in 1950, by the end of 1950, they passed a law righthere in America to let uh, displaced person in without visas. You know, theylet—not only Jews, there were some uh, gentiles too. That's how someof the German. . .

Nazis.

Nazis got smuggled in. That's true.